


Ways and Means

by agent_florida



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Beard Relationship, Don't Ask Don't Tell, F/M, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-04
Updated: 2010-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:32:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/agent_florida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Church tries to protect an important part of his identity from the military, hoping that he chose the right woman for the job. But having Tex as a beard is more complicated than it looks, especially when she has a tendency to ruin all of his relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ways and Means

_Getting too busy to make amends  
I should try to make it right_  
  
“I need your help with something.”  
  
Leo hadn’t wanted to ask her about it while they were hanging out at the bar, but the slightly tipsy words were his sober thoughts. It was just his luck that Allison would be turned towards him at that one moment. “Yeah?” she asked, wiping beer foam from her upper lip.  
  
“It’s just…” He looked around; some of the guys he knew from his squad were here, and he couldn’t talk about this in front of them, could he? “Can we go somewhere else? It’s kind of important.”  
  
“This should be real exciting,” she groaned, reaching for her leather jacket as she jumped off her bar stool. “What is it this time? Need my help beating that last level of  _Zombies Eating My Face XXIII_?”  
  
“No,” he scoffed. He left a twenty on the bar, following her out the door.  
  
“That’s what we did last time we left the bar to hang out at your place,” she pointed out.  
  
“Well, yeah, but…” She was walking across the street to his apartment faster than he could keep up – and against the light. “God damn it, can’t you wait for, like, two seconds?”  
  
She wouldn’t even turn around, just kept marching forward through the crosswalk as taxis and buses swerved around her and honked their horns. “I thought you said it was important,” she hollered back.  
  
“Not so important I can’t wait a goddamn minute!” The crosswalk cleared, and he ran across the street to catch up with her. “Jesus, what is your problem today?”  
  
“My problem? You’re the one who’s asking for my help.”  
  
“You know what I mean.” They had reached his apartment building, and the first few swipes of his card wouldn’t let them in, eliciting more than a few curses from him. By the time they were able to stumble into the lobby, it had started raining, making the night just that much worse for Leo.  
  
His cranky mood and her cool silence persisted until he managed to unlock his apartment door. Inside, his fluorescent lights flickered for more than a minute before they stayed on. Every surface available was covered with old take-out boxes and empty cans. “Wow, you’ve really cleaned up the place,” Allison said sarcastically.  
  
“At least it’s not that fucking dorm room your little program has you staying in.” Leo dumped the detritus littering the couch onto the floor. He wanted to be at least a little comfortable during what was sure to be an awkward conversation. “So, do you feel like helping me or not?”  
  
“Depends,” she said, a one-sided smile creeping up on her face. “How much are you willing to pay me?”  
  
“You don’t even want to know what it is, just how much you’ll get paid?” He rested his forehead in his hands, groaning. “I knew I shouldn’t have asked you.”  
  
“Oh, come on. I’ll do it, as long as you pony up.”  
  
“Is that supposed to be reassuring or something? Jesus Christ. And here I was asking you because I felt like we could maybe work this out.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She still sounded casually disinterested, which wasn’t perking up his confidence.  
  
“I mean…” He sighed. “I just… I feel like I’ve known you forever. Which is a weird feeling, because as far as I remember, I only met you three weeks ago. It’s like I know you from a previous life or something. And you’re the only one I trust to do this for me.”  
  
“What do you need?” she asked, trying to cut through his bullshit.  
  
“A beard,” he finally let out. He knew that look on her face from a million miles away; he didn’t think he’d have to explain himself, but there it was. “I’m gay, all right? A fairy, actually, if you want to get technical. None of the guys in my squad right now know, and I want to keep it that way. I know you’re a dyke, too, and I thought… well, I thought maybe we could both get something out of it.”  
  
“So,” she said, cutting him off in the middle of his explanation, “you want us to fake like we’re dating?”  
  
“If they catch us… if they catch me…” He didn’t know how to finish his sentence; he didn’t know what was going to get it across to her that he needed this, needed to stay in the military, needed a cover for what he was doing.  
  
“I’m in,” she said suddenly. And the most frightening thing of the evening so far was the smile she gave him: bright, intense, with flashing eyes that held more than just a hint of wickedness.  
  
 _Are you ready for the shit to hit  
I think you say you are but aren’t_  
  
He knew he never should have let that stupid bitch into his life.  
  
Looking around him at the complete bloody mess she had made at Sidewinder, he had to wonder just how she got off with doing things like that. She had… she had murdered all of his squad, except for himself and Flowers. She had missed Flowers because he had been at Blue Command, but…  
  
It was the way she had looked at him after she was done with her massacre. She had lifted her gaze, ever so slowly, and even though she hadn’t talked the entire time, even though her armor was shimmering with invisibility, he had known. He had known it was her.  
  
And even worse, she knew that he knew. And so she had just… stared. Just stared at him, as if that would have made it any better.  
  
He had thought of actually going back and maybe being respectable after the war. He had already been trying to persuade himself that Jimmy had been nothing to him. That Allison was the only one he had ever really wanted. That it was only her that he could get close to. It was a lie, of course, but it had been one of the only things to get him through his bitterly cold patrols, to stop him from going crazy every night he wanted to sneak into Jimmy’s room.  
  
And now that he was looking at the shells of his friends, he had to say… if she was a bitch before, he had no words for what she had turned into now. “Inhuman” came to mind, but it wouldn’t suit her without a thousand curse words on either end. “Possessed” was a little more like it, but she had acted like that even before she had been indoctrinated into that goddamn Freelancer program.  
  
Tex. That was the best word for it. She wasn’t Allison any more, she was Tex. And if she was going to be that way, if she was going to leave behind that identity with him, then he’d just have to harden his own heart. He couldn’t be Leo any more. He’d have to be Church.  
  
 _Doctor make it better instantly  
You’re the only one who can_  
  
“Excuse me…”  
  
“Hey, pal, one second, okay?” Why was everyone so intent on interrupting him? It wasn’t like he was particularly attached to anyone at Blue Base at the moment. Well… that wasn’t exactly true, but things with Tucker were never easy, and most days he hated him as much as he hated anyone. Things had changed since Captain Flowers had died, and Church had been picking up the leadership slack with his own abilities, hating himself for every moment he spent mothering the rookie or yelling at Tucker. Once he was done giving the two of them a piece of his mind, he turned back to the interloper. “Okay. Yes. Hello. Who are you?”  
  
The new guy in purple armor just shrugged. “My name’s DuFresne. I received your call for a medic.”  
  
Really? Could it have been worse timing? “A medic? That was like three months ago.” And he remembered every day. Every day without her…  
  
He remembered Caboose’s little memorial ceremony for both of them: how he had put Church’s old body under the cross and Tex’s body under the Star of David (even though he tried to explain that neither of them were religious at all), the few words that were said, and eventually, how the dirt and the tears in his eyes obscured the broken MJOLNIR suits laid to rest. He remembered every stupid ‘day’ in that canyon, even though the sun never set, because about once every 24 hours or so, he’d have a thought, a goddamn  _thought_ , about Tex, and everything would halt and become crystal clear for about five seconds. And then he’d lose the perspective he had on life and go back to bitching at everyone and everything - especially Tucker, because he didn’t want to admit he could still have feelings for people - but… still.  
  
“Yeah, what’d you do,  _crawl_  the whole way here?” Tucker’s familiar derision brought him out of his funk, and he was thankful for the save.  
  
“I came as quickly as I could.” At least the new guy sounded honest. “Where’s the patient?”  
  
He seriously thought there would still be a patient after all this time? “Well, she’s about fifty yards behind you… and six feet straight down.”  
  
The doc turned around and saw the graves. “Oh,” he said, his voice small. “I’m sorry for your loss.”  
  
“What?” Church was almost too lost in thought again to pick up what DuFresne had said, but he knew he had to say something. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, thanks, man.” Was he overdoing it on the sarcasm? Were the other guys on his team going to figure out how much she really meant to him? “It was tough…” Wasn’t that the truth, but he couldn’t let Tucker know anything; it would have crushed him. “But, well, what are you gonna do…”  
  
Thankfully, Caboose picked up where he had left off with more of his blathering nonsense. He could have sworn that the rookie was getting more and more stupid as the days wore on. But then the medic had to ask the obvious question: “Who’s in the other grave?”  
  
Church knew he had to tell the truth; there was no way around who was next to her, six feet under. But saying the words brought a lump to his throat, and he had never been more glad for the obscuring helmet on his head. “That’s, uh… that’s me. I’m in that grave.” And for a few seconds, he really did wish it was him.  
  
 _I’ve been waiting here my whole damn life  
And I’ve forgotten what I wanted_  
  
At least he wasn’t the only fag at Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha.  
  
Among the many things he had never wanted to know about Tucker, the foremost was probably the gay porn magazines he knew the other soldier had stashed between his mattress and his bed frame. The second foremost was the sounds he would make in the middle of the night, the ones that would wake Church up just when he thought it would be safe to fall asleep.  
  
And among the many things he had never wanted Tucker to know about himself, the foremost would have to be the fact that he was incredibly turned on by all of it.  
  
But it was too small of a base, and there was too much time they had to waste waiting between Flowers’ death and the arrival of the new recruit (and the supposed tank that was coming). So, as it usually happened, things led to more things, which led to other things, which led to the One Big Thing.  
  
And lying there, supine, drenched in sweat and breathing hard, another man next to him for the first time since Sidewinder, Church’s first hazy thought after Things Had Happened was of Allison.  
  
Not Tex. He didn’t know who that person was. She was violent, she was aggressive, she was unpredictable, and she was unknowable under that smoky suit her Freelancer program had given her. No, it wasn’t her. It was the woman she used to be, the one with dark, cherry red hair pulled back into two short pigtails, the one who always wore her fatigues low-slung on her hips even if she was off her base, the one whose tank tops always had that tendency of creeping up to her waist and showing off her hips.  
  
He missed Allison. She had been able to be there for him and provide him an extra layer of security. Without her, he felt… naked. Not just naked like he was right now, and not just naked the way he felt with Tucker staring at him like he was, but truly exposed.   
  
“Dude, you’re quiet.” Tucker’s own voice was hushed, even though there was no one to hear them except for the Reds on the other side of the canyon.  
  
“We’re going to get caught,” he mumbled, saying the first thing on his mind to get Tucker off his back.  
  
And it literally did; the feeling of another sweat-drenched body peeling off of his drying skin was unpleasant. He wished he hadn’t said anything, because Tucker was especially whiny when he pointed out, “Who’s going to catch us here?”  
  
Allison, he thought again. It always came back to Allison, and he was slowly realizing that he might not have needed her as much as he had thought.  
  
 _Maybe I can do it  
If I put my back into it  
I can leave you if I wanted  
But there’s nowhere else that I can go_  
  
Fucking idiots. Especially Tucker. Why in the world would he radio Blue Command and request that a Freelancer, especially one like Tex, be brought to the base? And, more importantly, did Tucker just say he needed men?  
  
Whatever the case was, Church couldn’t exactly sit around and act like a voyeur any more. Sure, it was fun when he could see the little things that he never wanted to know about the rookie, like the fact that he had about twenty years’ worth of cheese connoisseur magazines. If he spent another few hours like that, though, he knew he would try to give his pistol a blowjob out of boredom, and he didn’t even know if committing suicide would get him out of being a ghost.  
  
So he did the next best thing and concentrating on materializing in back of Tucker, looking forward to freaking his teammates the fuck out. “Tucker,” he moaned, trying not to think of the last time he had moaned his name. “Tuckerrrr, I’ve come with a waaaaarning…”  
  
But Tucker just turned his helmet towards him, and Church knew the expression under that helmet would be baffled. “Who the hell are you?”  
  
Any kind of fun aspect to Church’s practical joke was now gone. Tucker didn’t even recognize him? What the fuck? “I am the ghoooost of Chuuurch, and I’ve come back with a waaaaaaarning…”  
  
Caboose just looked over at him. “You’re not Church. Church is blue. You’re white.”  
  
Jesus Christ, was everyone at the base retarded except for him? “Rookie, shut up, man! I’m a freaking ghost! Have you ever seen a blue ghost before?”  
  
Then he heard Tucker’s minute sigh, and he knew that the teal soldier finally recognized him. “Yeah, that’s definitely him.” And in that pathetic excuse for a canyon, that brightened Church’s outlook for just a moment.  
  
But after all the interruptions… “Now I gotta start all over again. Tuckerrr, I’ve come back with a waaarning…”  
  
But then he got interrupted. By Tucker. Again. “Is it really necessary to do the voice?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s kind of annoying,” the rookie agreed.  
  
And he would know something about annoying, Church figured, so he cut it out. “Fine. Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve come back from the dead to give you a warning about Tex. Don’t let…”  
  
And that was when the bickering started. He was interrupted pretty much constantly from that point onwards as he tried to tell the story of what had happened to him – what had happened to Jimmy, what had happened to all of them – on Sidewinder. It was usually Tucker interrupting, but the little interruptions he made were actually tolerable for once. He actually told the rookie to shut up a few times before Church got a chance to say anything. And at one point, he even asked “Do you think I was a good kid, Church?” He told Tucker not to get jealous, but inside his helmet, he was smiling, just that littlest bit.  
  
At the end of his story, he had to sum up quickly and get his point across that Tex was the worst thing that would ever happen to these guys. “You, uh, you remember that girl I told you about back home? Well, let’s just say that Tex was the real reason why we never got married.” It was a little convoluted to say without giving away what she really was, but it was a good attempt nonetheless. Unfortunately, it took so much effort out of him that he could feel himself going. “Guys, I’m fading fast and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Just listen to my warning. Don’t let Tex get involved here.”  
  
“Okay,” Tucker affirmed.  
  
“I mean it, Tucker. No fighting ,no scouting, nothing. You’ll regret it…”  
  
He faded out before he could finish his own sentence, but he already knew they were going to disregard his message. Tucker didn’t know it, but he had just severely fucked up any chance of something between them going right by inviting that bitch into Blood Gulch. He supposed it was his own damn fault; everywhere he went, she seemed to follow him, and just when he thought he was doing all right on his own, she would come back and invade his personal space. Was there ever going to be a chance of things going right for him?  
  
Not with her around. And based on the black suit of armor he could just see peeking behind that rock, she was definitely around. Oh, fuck.   
  
 _Maybe I won’t suffer  
If I find a way to love her  
I’d be lying to myself  
‘Cause there is no way out that I can see_  
  
Church hadn’t counted on actually continuing whatever had happened with Tucker, but to his surprise, he found that he was getting more and more comfortable with everything. He couldn’t remember a time when he had actually had a somewhat functional relationship, so everything that was happening was a sudden surprise, and Church tried not to take it for granted.  
  
Except, of course, for when Tucker managed to piss him off, which was often. Today, he was attempting to talk in very thinly veiled code in front of the rookie so that they would be able to figure out their next move. “You, uh. You got anyone else, man?”  
  
Church decided to nip that one right in the bud where it was. “Yeah, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve, uh. I’ve actually got a girl back home.” Which, of course, meant ‘Shut the hell up about what we’re doing while you’re talking in front of the rookie,’ but if Tucker felt threatened, so much the better. He was also thinking about Tex, but how far did ‘pretending to be his girlfriend’ actually carry over into their relationship?  
  
“Oh, yeah?” The tone in Tucker’s voice was challenging, like he wanted to see how far Church was going to take the charade. “Girlfriend or wife?”  
  
Oh. He hadn’t been expecting to actually answer any questions about what he had said. “No, man, she’s just my girlfriend, you know?” he bluffed, hoping the rookie wasn’t catching any of this. “We were gonna get married, but I got shipped out, and…” He couldn’t keep going; he was going to lose the metaphor in a minute. He just hoped Tucker felt sufficiently stung. “You know how it works.”  
  
“Oh, well, you gonna marry her when you get back?” Was Tucker being deliberately oblivious? Church thought that they were talking in code, but what if Tucker had actually been trying to have a real conversation with him? Leave it to Leo to classically fuck up any kind of relationship he ever got into.  
  
Thankfully, he was spared a little time to think while the rookie made another stupid comment. “I’m not going to get married. My dad always said, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”  
  
Church didn’t know if he and Tucker were still doing that figurative-speech thing, or if they had given up on the metaphor, but it didn’t matter: the new guy had just said something insulting. Either he was saying something against Tex, or he was trying to disparage whatever he had going on with Tucker, and either way, Church wasn’t going to stand for it. “Hey rookie, did you just call my girlfriend a cow?”  
  
“No, I think he called her a slut!” Tucker said, and the tone of his voice let Church know that he was still on the metaphor track.  
  
Well, shit. He needed to talk to Tucker and he needed to talk to him right the hell now. Making up a flimsy excuse to get the rookie into the base and leave the two of them alone was a little harder than he had counted on, but after a few moments, he and Tucker were the only ones out in front of Blue Base. “So,” Church said, trying to break the awkward silence that had fallen between the two of them.  
  
“What am I supposed to believe?” Tucker asked him, point-blank. “That you have a girlfriend, or that you’re gay?”  
  
“Believe whatever you want,” Church said, his voice disparaging, before he could stop himself and think it through. Why couldn’t he have just said ‘the past is past’ or something like that? Fuck.  
  
“Can’t you just pick one, man?” his teammate complained.  
  
“Do you really think I would be like this if I could help it?” Church spat out angrily. “Rock and a hard place. I can’t ever win with you.”  
  
Tucker just brushed him off, turning around to focus his attention on the tank again. “Whatever, dude.”  
  
A few more painful moments of silence passed. Why did he have to pick a stupid fucking division of the armed forces where he couldn’t even see someone’s face when he was talking to them? At least he could get back on Tucker’s good side – maybe he could offer to let him drive the tank. “Well… enough gabbing out of us, let’s take this bad boy out for a spin.”  
  
“Me? I can’t drive that thing.” Like it was so easy for him to say that, to admit to his own failings.  
  
Church couldn’t believe it. “You’re telling me you’re not armor certified?”  
  
“I can’t – I don’t even know how to use the fucking sniper rifle!” And for a moment, Church couldn’t tell whether Tucker was mad at him or just mad at himself. “Don’t you know how to drive that?”  
  
“No!” He was apoplectic. Surrounded by idiots in the asshole of the universe with a vehicle that none of them could drive. And they couldn’t even make a helmet so that you could see whoever was underneath! “Holy crap! Who is running this army?”

 

  
_If I lied you’d know it instantly  
So I just had to look away_

He knew Tucker was getting thoughtful. Even though he couldn’t see past the mirrored plate of his MARK-V helmet, he could just tell. And since it wasn’t like he could reach out and touch him, or say anything reassuring, he went for the generic. “How’s Sheila doing?”

They both knew he wasn’t really asking about Sheila, but Tucker had to keep up the pretense. It was always hard to tell if someone else was listening over the radio. “I’m not gonna lie, it’s not looking pretty. She may have… twisted her differential, some structural damage. It could be a disc.”

At this point, Church knew that whatever metaphor they had been using to talk about… whatever it was that was going on between them, it had backfired. Horribly. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, do you?”

Tucker sighed, which in any language meant admitting defeat. “No, not a clue.”

“What about Tex, any sign of her?” What he wanted, right now, was to tell Tucker to stop babysitting the tank and to get inside the base, where Church could possess him just a little and they could do enough to keep them both from going crazy. If Tex was anywhere nearby, though, or if there was any chance he’d get caught, he’d probably stay frustrated for the rest of the week; she had the amazing power of cutting his libido into tiny little pieces.

“No, no Tex.” Church allowed himself to brighten just a little. “Is it unusual for her to disappear like that?”

Well, it really wasn’t, but he didn’t want to think about why. “When we were dating,” and by ‘dating’ he hoped Tucker heard ‘living together platonically as roommates,’ “she’d sneak off all the time.” He reminded himself to keep a light tone, so Tucker would think it was the truth and he didn’t have to get hurt by his memories. “But it was usually to sleep with other guys, or to spend money that she’d taken out of my wallet. And since I don’t have any money,” on purpose, so she couldn’t be tempted by it and stick around hoping she could pilfer it, “and…” how could he say this the right way… “no offense to you, Tucker, but…”

But Tucker cut him off before he could finish his sentence, carefully not looking in his direction as he spoke. “You’re a dick.”

Church wanted to call after him as he slunk back into Blue Base, but it wouldn’t exactly have been the smartest thing he had ever done to shout out “I want to keep you all to myself” for the entire canyon to hear.

_All the honesty I’ve ever lost  
I can’t begin to even curse_

“That titfucking cumguzzling whore-ass bitch.”

Yes, he did currently have the worst hangover of his life, which was only exacerbated by the friendly sunlight pouring through the blinds. But that wasn’t the worst of it, nor was the fact that he had apparently been sleeping in the sizeable wet spot from the night before. Even not knowing who exactly he had slept with last night was paling in comparison to what he had just figured out.

His wallet, lying open-faced on the bedside table, was empty.

He tried to piece everything together, but it was taking him far too long. He knew he had to have had at least a hundred dollars in there before he had gone out drinking last night, and between a half-dozen beers for himself and, ah, whoever else that had been, he still wouldn’t have been out five twenties when all was said and done. Not only that, but whoever had gone through it had also managed to take his credit card and his military ID.

He groped for his cell phone, but it wasn’t where it should have been; the only indication of its existence was a feeble buzzing noise from the floor as one of his alarms went off a few hours too late. He silenced it quickly (noise was not the best thing in the world for him right now) and made a call to one of the only people who could help him piece this together. Allison had been with him last night when he and whoever that guy was had started drinking, so maybe she would remember when the other guy had slipped him that roofie.

Her cell, though, just kept ringing and ringing, and she didn’t pick up for a full minute. “Huhwazza…?”

Before she could answer properly, Leo thought he could hear a guy’s voice in the background. “The fuck? I didn’t know Nevada was a guy.”

“She’s not,” Allison admitted sleepily.

“She’s… what?” Leo knew he might be a little easy to piss off sometimes, but he wasn’t stupid. “Who the hell are you with?”

“None of your business,” she sniped back. The male voice in the background yelled “Who are you on the phone with?” loud enough for him to hear.

“Jesus Christ,” Leo grumbled to himself. “I was calling you to see if you knew who that guy was, from last night…”

“Eric,” she said easily. “His name’s Eric.” And as if on cue, in the background, Leo could hear the man’s voice asking, “You talkin’ about me, sweetcheeks?”

“Son of a bitch.” Hungover as he was, he could still put two and two together. “So you let this guy roofie me and steal my money… and then you run off with him?”

In the background of Allison’s end of the conversation, he could hear that same guy getting closer and closer to the phone. “Come on, Tex, can we get back to doin’ what we were doin’ before your roommate called?”

Leo’s stomach turned, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t just because he felt like it was pumped full of battery acid. “You let him fuck you?”

“Well, so did you,” she said, and he could almost hear her shrug over the phone.

“That’s not the point – you stole my date – he stole my money –  _I thought you were a dyke!_ ” he shouted into the phone.

He hated the way she giggled into the phone like she was an innocent little girl, especially since it could have been something that Eric guy was doing. “Well, technically, I stole your money.”

“You stole… You bitch!” He felt completely overwhelmed by rage.

“And sorry to say, hon-“ why did she only use pet names to piss him off? “-but some people are bisexual.”

“You’re not!” he reminded her.

“Yes, I am,” she confirmed. And in the background, he could hear a quiet, mumbled argument between Eric and Allison, which ended with a few saucy phrases that he’d prefer to have left unheard before the line went dead.

_Well, fuck,_  he thought.  _What the hell do I do now?_

It was obvious that their beard relationship was falling apart. As he just proved to her last night, he could get away with a few one-night-stands without the military noticing, so technically he didn’t even need her. But he still liked the sense of security he had with her still being around. Because she was there, he felt like he could never get caught. He also had someone to scare off would-be burglars from his apartment and help him beat the hardest difficulty settings for all of his video games.

And as she just proved to him, she really didn’t need him either. If she had solely been interested in girls, it would have been more of a problem for her to get what she wanted, but it was Allison – she used brute force and she got her way, no matter what. But now, with the sudden revelation that she wasn’t exactly as gay as she pretended to be, it was clear that it didn’t need to be him in this weird relationship with her.

So why did she stick around? Was it to tease him constantly about his general ineptitude? Because she certainly had enough fun doing that. Was it to scum off of his rent? More than likely. Was it to be the most effective cockblock on earth? 

Whatever it was, she hadn’t mentioned wanting to leave him. And she knew that he was too vulnerable alone to leave her. He could leave her if he wanted, of course, but there was nowhere else he could go for a cheap apartment short of being reassigned, and there was no one else to run to. “Fuck,” he said out loud for good measure. He was truly screwed.

_I never knew the taste of blood ‘til now  
It’s clear I never should have known_

He spit out the blood in his mouth, because that’s what all the guys in the movies did when they were in a bar fight. Somehow, the movies had neglected to leave out most of the rest. Like, for example, that it hurt to get punched in the gut. Or on the jaw. Or on the nose. Or that it actually hurt to try and punch someone back.

The worst part was that he couldn’t back down from this fight. When a guy calls you a homo in front of a bar of soldiers, no matter how true it is, Leo knew by Man Code that fists had to fly, or he might get reported for letting it slide.

He wasn’t exactly proving his masculinity in this, but there wasn’t much else he could do. At least he could prove to his C.O. that he had been mashed into burger for a good reason. It was hard to aim the next punch, because somewhere along the line, one of the blows had split his brow ridge and blood and sweat were dripping into his eyes, but he heard a nice crunch as his fist connected with something.

And of course, just when he was doing something well, someone had to come in and interrupt. “Come on. Guys. Cut it out. If there’s going to be any fighting in this bar tonight, I wanna be the one that starts it. All right, come on, sit down.”

Leo could hardly see as one of the bartenders escorted the burlier, drunker man to the door, but he was thankful that the interloper in his fight had had the common sense to pull up a bar stool for him to collapse into. “I can’t see. I can’t fucking see,” he said dumbly, clutching his face.

“Oh, you big baby,” the interloper said again. He heard a few ripping sounds, and then rags were being applied to his face, sopping up the worst of the blood. “You’re gonna live, just stop complaining.”

As he blinked the blood out of his eyes, he heard a chair scrape against the floor, and he knew that whoever it was that had just saved his life was going to attempt to talk to him about why he was so apparently suicidal. “I had to do it,” he said before he could be accused of anything.

“I know.” Now that his vision was a little clearer, he could see the person sitting across from him. She had short, choppy hair, dyed cherry red, and it was falling into her face; he realized that it was probably her bandana he was holding to his forehead. Her eyes were dark, lit from within with some kind of amusement, and her lips were curled in a half-smile. The arms she had crossed over the chair back in front of her were muscled and distinctly unfeminine, and she was wearing a wifebeater and fatigues.

“God damn it, why did it have to be a girl?” Leo groaned to himself. He pulled the bandana away, but when he saw the dark stain in the middle, he pressed it right back to his forehead.

“If someone hadn’t stopped you, you’d probably be dead,” she pointed out. She seemed to be enjoying his discomfort.

“Good, I’d rather. Damn it, I’m never gonna live this down! I try to fight back when a guy says something about me, and it’s a girl that has to stop the fight?” He would have raged even more, but his head was hurting enough from his blows as it was.

“You know, you could just keep getting angry and keep losing blood, which would be enjoyable to watch…” The chick leaned forward on her chair, getting in Leo’s face. “Or you could thank me.”

“For what? Making sure the entire base knows I’m a homo?” He spit out another mouthful of blood onto the floor.

“For saving your life, cockbite.” She made a motion to the bartender, who was at her side within seconds, bearing fresh rags. “Stop that. You’re making a mess.”

He let her fuss with him for a while, since his bleeding obviously amused her. “If you’re going to fuck around with me, you could at least tell me your name.”

She laughed as she smeared the blood around on his face. It was low and cruel, an evil laugh, and it made the pit of his stomach shrivel up. He wished he hadn’t asked, but he couldn’t take it back now. “Allison. My name’s Allison.”

“Leo,” he said, holding his hand out to shake, but she was concentrating too hard on whatever it was she was doing with those rags. When he got another clear view of her face, his gut reaction was of déjà vu, but that couldn’t have been right. “Do I… know you from somewhere?”

“Probably,” she shrugged, looking down to indicate his dog tags.

That was more than likely a sign to get the hell away, but he was a little dizzy and more than a little hurt from his fight, and besides, where else was there for him to go? “Can you at least get me another beer?” he asked her, and before he knew it, they were both deep into their third glass. 

_Breathing fire was never this much fun  
So there’s a dark side in us all_

“Church, I want you to consider just one thing.” Oh, God, that pompous Freelancer asshole was trying to talk him into doing it again. “The break-in at Command, the one to free Alpha - I think you should know which Freelancers were a part of that.” Yeah, and why should he care? He was a motherfucking ghost, not the Alpha. “It was Tex that organized the whole thing.”

Whoa. That was new. “Yeah? So what?” he played it off.

“She came back for you, Church,” Wash pointed out. “Even if she didn’t know it was you she was helping, somehow she felt she had to get you – get the Alpha – out.”

“Wash…” He hoped that one word conveyed enough of his emotions that it would get the Freelancer off his back. He was exasperated. He was tired of being called something he fucking wasn’t. And goddamn if he didn’t want to hear Tex’s name ever again.

“And don’t you have that same feeling? That she’s a part of all this? That now she needs help? And that you’re the only one that can possibly do that?” He sounded even more pretentious by the minute, and Church just hoped that he shut up soon. “Even I have that feeling, and… I’m not connected the way you two are.”

Well, he had gone and said it. He didn’t know how Wash knew about him and Tex being what they were, but the important part was that the son of a bitch knew. Church hoped that just staring at him would let the Freelancer know just how far he had crossed that line – and how much he really had gotten through to him how important this was.

“No? Well, like I said, your choice.” Wash sounded disappointed. Good – at least he had gotten through to him. “I can’t make you do what you need to do.”

But as he turned his back to address the Reds in their jeeps, Church took his chance to ambush Wash’s mind, and he jumped out of his body and into Wash’s as quickly as he could.

Once he was inside, it was nothing like he was used to. He was disoriented, down was sideways, he was underwater and the light wasn’t helping him find the surface. It wasn’t like possessing a body, where he would have complete control. And it wasn’t like sharing with Tucker, either.

He was stuck. He was literally barred from accessing the rest of Wash’s mind, confined to a prison-like room with several filing cabinets of old data from other AI who had occupied this slot. He had no output to influence the situation around him, held helpless in the back of Wash’s mind. He couldn’t even access the outside environment and see what was going on. And it was infuriating.

Screaming out his rage wouldn’t do anything; just by being in this environment, he knew that Wash would have been totally unfazed. Whatever had happened with Epsilon, whatever the memory-frag had done to him, the Freelancer seemed prepared for almost anything a foreign element would throw at him. So Church tried another approach: totally trashing the place. Papers and folders started flying as he wrenched the heavy filing cabinets from the walls, and the noise they made as they crashed to the floor was more than satisfying.

And he got what he wanted, too; Wash’s mental avatar appeared as he raised his head from his handiwork, standing inexplicably behind the same bars Church was. “You need to stop doing that.”

“Why?” Church knew he was acting out like a child, but damn if it wasn’t satisfying to actually make the Freelancer show a little emotion.

“Because if I can’t concentrate, this isn’t going to go off like I planned, and you’re going to get obliterated.” He took a step closer to Church, crossing his arms.

Church kicked at the documents and folders littering the floor, defying Wash to come any nearer, but before he could do anything else vindictive, the other soldier had pinned him against the wall, hands above his head, in one fluid movement. His helmet cracked as it hit concrete, and the wall was cool against the body suit under his MJOLNIR plating. “What the fuck?” he gritted out through a closed throat.

“I told you. You need to stop doing that.” Wash was using all of his weight to keep him against the wall, a knee coming up to keep pressure on his hip plating to press his pelvis into the hard surface. “I need to concentrate.”

“And so you’re just going to fucking keep me like this?” His rage was quickly turning into hysteria. It was hard enough being completely helpless, but being immobile certainly wasn’t helping his mood.

Wash shoved him against the wall, gripping his wrists tighter. “You didn’t give me much of a choice.”

A desperate laugh was building in Church’s lungs. “You sick fuck. Is this what Epsilon did to you?”

Another shove told Church he needed to drop the subject, but it brought Wash’s body closer against his, and the way the Freelancer’s codpiece pressed into the space between his armor plates told him everything he needed to know about what had happened there with his other AI. The moment was fraught with a tension he didn’t even know could exist, a heat that made him wish his armor could regulate his temperature a little better, a need for air that wasn’t just caused by his body crushed against the wall with the weight of another soldier.

“You need to listen to me.” Wash’s voice was low, and Church could swear that he felt the ghost of his breath inside the shell of his helmeted ear.

“Does it really look like I’m doing anything else right now?” he pointed out sarcastically, struggling weakly against the hand holding his wrists above his head.

“I have the Meta in front of me, asking for the Alpha. I’m going to project you, and you’re going to cross over and possess him. My plan isn’t going to work unless you cooperate. Understood?” When he didn’t respond, Wash shoved his body further up the wall, so his feet almost left the floor. “Understood?”

“All right, all right, I got it.” And then he wasn’t pinned against that damn wall; he was being projected from Wash’s suit, his familiar sniper rifle in his hand, facing down that monster who had been hunting him and the other guys from Blood Gulch. His head was wreathed with the forms of several other AI, but Church wasn’t intimidated, not after what had just happened.

The Meta snarled, but he tried to keep his cool. “Hi there,” he said to the animalistic Freelancer, derisive as he could manage.

He could feel an attitude rising within Wash again, the feeling almost like his own feeling of helpless anger, but he was relishing in it, knowing that he was the reason why the Freelancer was pissed. “You know, I can see why you didn't want anyone else in your head,” he said offhandedly, trying to keep his cool. “Got some pretty heavy stuff going on there. I think you need to talk to a professional.”

“That's too bad. I just lost my job, and we have great mental health coverage.” He could almost taste Wash’s anger, and it was  _delicious._

But underneath the anger, there was fear, an ancient and primal feeling, something pushed down almost too far for Church to reach. And it was this emotion that Church reached out to when he asked, “How much time do you need?”

“Whatever you can get me.” He skipped a beat, and the emotions became a little more jumbled before something came to the surface that Church hadn’t quite been expecting. It was somewhere between worry and compassion, and it was disturbing to see it in the Freelancer. “When the EMP goes off…”

“When it goes off, I’ll be fine. It only affects computers, remember? And  _I_  am a motherfucking ghost.”

As he left his side to possess the Meta, Church could feel undercurrents of regret surging through Wash’s other emotions, and he knew that he had stung the Freelancer deeply. Why would Wash have felt something so much like guilt when the situation wasn’t even his fault? He hoped that Wash knew that his acidity was his cover for all the things he never wanted anyone else to know, hoped that he had done enough to show that he was behind Wash the entire way.

He tried to slip into the Meta’s mind, but it was nothing but chaos inside. If it had been difficult to possess Wash, it was impossible to fight for space of his own with so many other minds crowding into one person. Church tried to find the surface, tried to battle through vestiges of personalities, touching on rage, fear, logic, trust, and almost reaching the top of Agent Maine’s mind and complete control before the pain of the EMP changed everything.

_Maybe I can do it  
If I put my back into it  
I can leave you if I wanted  
But there’s nowhere else that I can go_

All he had to do was repossess Lopez’s body. All he fucking had to do was get back inside the robot and he would be his good old self (plus a few spare dongles), and he couldn’t even do that.

He watched in helpless rage as the robot’s body twitched, but the worst part of it all was probably Tucker’s genuinely concerned reaction. “You okay in there, Church? Church? Hey, what’s going on? Do I need to flip your switch?”

Before Tucker could say anything else potentially incriminating, he faded himself back into view. “What the…” Who else in the canyon knew how to possess bodies? “That wasn’t me! What the hell’s going on here?”

But when Lopez spoke again, the identity of the ghost in the machine was painfully obvious. “Well.  _Buenos dios_ , cockbites, guess who’s back.”

Mother of fuck, the last person he thought he would see ever again, and she came back from the dead just to spite him? And stole his body on top of it? He wished he had a body of his own, just so he could attempt to throttle her. Of course, then she would choke him, so it wasn’t like he would give her much of a dent, but it would mean something, damn it. As it was, he would have to make do with his words, like a big boy. “Get out of my body right now, Tex!”

Of course, it wasn’t like those words were going to do anything, because she just turned to stare at him. “ _Your_  body? This isn’t your body, I stole it!”

Like that was going to work on him. “Yeah, but… I stole it first!” And so the best comeback he could think of made him sound like a child in the sandbox. “What’s it gonna take to get you outta there?”

“Well…” With Tex, that meant the start of a long explanation, and it was never, ever, in his favor. “Ever since I’ve been a ghost, I’ve been watching you guys a lot.”

Church had so many questions in response to that one simple sentence. Like, how the hell was she able to become a ghost? And why didn’t she warn him about it so he could watch his back? At least Tucker cut in and asked one of the more obvious questions. “Whoa, when you say you’ve been watching us, does that mean you’ve been watching us  _all the time?_ ” Church saw Tucker’s helmet move to face him… and look clear through him, to a rock that he had spray-painted to mark as his own. If he had had a body, and if that body had been human, he would have been red-faced by now, from rage as much as embarrassment. “Like, even when we’re alone?”

“Yes, Tucker, and you should be  _very_  ashamed of yourself.” Oh, Christ on a cracker, she knew. If she knew about the body possessing thing, she must have learned it from somewhere. And the only other person in that canyon who was a ghost was Church. And the only possessing he had been doing recently was that thing that he had figured out with Tucker, that thing where he could actually share his mind and not kick him out of control of his body, that thing that was so much better than being in Lopez’s body…

Tucker didn’t make the situation any better with his next comment. “It’s very lonely out here,” he admitted in a shamed tone.

And now Church wished he really was dead, not a ghost so he couldn’t hear this kind of thing. Tucker had basically just admitted to everything they had ever done together. In front of Tex. In a position where she could judge the two of them as harshly as she had ever wanted.

But… she didn’t. She actually kept from saying something mean and disparaging about him. So either she was acting out of character to get them to do something for her… but she could easily do anything she wanted for herself, now that she had her body back. Or maybe, just maybe, she had learned something when she died and she had decided not to be too much of a bitch.

Whatever the case was, Church let himself breathe again. As of right now, she didn’t give a fuck, and as far as he knew, he was still in good standing with her. Even though she knew, she wouldn’t tell a soul as long as she lived.

_Maybe I won’t suffer  
If I find a way to love her  
I’d be lying to myself  
‘Cause there is no way out that I can see_

God damn it, she just had to be in the afterlife, too, didn’t she?

It wasn’t like, by this time, he harbored a grudge against her or anything. With all the shit they had been through, at least they had someone else who understood. But for once in whatever he could have called his life, he thought he might have had a place all to himself, a place where there would be no one else to bother him or pester him. Which, of course, meant that she would have to be there, as the universe’s one way of making sure he never got what he wanted.

But since it was just the two of them, they teamed up, roaming through their personal hells together. They both seemed to know where they wanted to go, but didn’t exactly know where that was; Church might have called it a yearning for home, but he was so confused about what he was that he didn’t even know where he wanted to be.

And then he knew. When he heard that distinctive Southern accent, he knew he was in the right place. He would have told Tex to shut up as they approached the Red base at Valhalla, but it didn’t matter; no one else could hear them, and it wasn’t like the Reds were important.

He passed them by, though, hoping to see what would be going on at Blue Base. And if what he saw wasn’t exactly what he expected, he certainly knew Caboose well enough for it to be almost par for the course. The interior of the base was on fire, and Caboose himself was running around and screaming at the fire for it to go out. At least Caboose was still predictably dumb, as ever. Still.

“This is my legacy?” he griped out loud to Tex. “I mean, what did I do in my life to deserve this?” Probably more than he wanted to remember, but he wanted to think the best about himself. “Just seems it’s all gone so wrong.”

“Well, what are you gonna do about it, Church?” Tex asked from his left side.

“Do? What can I do about it, Tex? I’m dead. I’m gone.” Did she miss the part where her Pelican crashed, or did she miss the part where the EMP went off at Freelancer headquarters? Because neither of them seemed particularly easy to misinterpret.

“Oh, come on, Church, they say you’re never completely dead if someone still remembers you.”

Was she trying to make an oblique reference to Epsilon? Or was she trying to be his spiritual guardian angel or someshit and just trying to piss him off instead? “Yeah, but look who’s left to remember me. Him?” Caboose probably didn’t remember who he was by now. And if she was trying to refer to the AI they had emancipated from Headquarters, it probably didn’t ever know who he was, because he was a motherfucking ghost and not an AI. “Sure feels like being dead. Like, all the way dead. Like someone encased me in cement and then fired me into the sun dead.” He sure wished he was dead; he didn’t think he’d be able to survive another one of those EMP blasts if they hurt so badly. “It’s just a long way back for us.”

“Okay. So, then, we’re done?”

“No-ho-ho, we’re not done.” Did she even think that he wouldn’t still want to be alive? It felt good to be alive and in a body. Being a ghost sucked. He could snark all he wanted, but it didn’t mean anyone would listen to him. And when he had a body, he could… well, maybe he could find out where Tucker was. Or find out what had happened to Wash after the EMP blast; he didn’t remember much for a good chunk afterwards.

“Well, if we’re not done, let’s get started.” She said it so calmly, like it was so obvious.

And it was just another one of those things that pissed him off about her. “Hey, have I ever told you how helpful you are to me?” he asked her, voice laced with sarcasm. “I mean, you’re so full of fucking wisdom. What would I do without you?” But once he said it, he started to wonder. He had been without her for a while, and even though he had been given the opportunity to finally be himself, it still didn’t feel quite right without her hounding his back.

“I try my best,” she said, her sarcastic reply reminding him more of the old Tex. He almost allowed himself to smile in his helmet before she pointed out, “And you have no one to blame but yourself.”

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, it was true. It was pretty much all his fucking fault that everything had happened – that the two of them had met, that they had set up that weird relationship, that he had been shipped out to the ass-end of the universe, that he hadn’t been able to fix the time loop, that he couldn’t make something work with Tucker, that Wash had shut him out before anything could have happened. And as much as it hurt him, she was right. There was no one to blame but himself.


End file.
